Considerable design efforts have been applied to the development of boating accessories and their spatial arrangement around the passenger compartments of recreational watercraft. In order to maximize the enjoyment of time spent on the water, it is preferable that boating accessories are located such that they refrain from hindering the movement of occupants while still performing the functions for which they are intended. Currently, there are various means of mounting equipment racks, lamps, audio speakers, and other accessories to a boat.
In some cases, accessory supports will have to be screwed or bolted to the boat hull. To screw or a bolt a device to a boat, holes must be drilled into the hull thereby damaging or weakening the boat and further accelerating corrosion or deterioration. Alternately, accessory supports may be affixed to a boat via a grooved bracket fastened to a boat railing. As such railings are commonly tubular in shape, use of a rounded bracket in combination with a rounded bracket results in a support with reduced stability which may not be equipped to handle the mounting of heavy accessories.
Many of today's outdoor enthusiasts enjoy spending time participating in recreational boating activities including waterskiing, wakeboarding, wake skating, and other popular watersports. Such activities entail the use of watersports equipment with extended dimensions requiring efficient mechanisms for their storage or restraint on a boat. However, many of the products currently available for efficiently storing watersports equipment are constructed such that they are only mountable to vertical tow pylons or tow towers. Watercrafts which do not incorporate such structures are unable to take advantage of the space saving features of these storage apparatus.
However, a vast majority of today's recreational watercraft are equipped with cleats located around their periphery. These cleats serve to provide tie-down locations for anchoring or mooring a craft in a given location. When a cleat is placed on the boat by a manufacturer, the area where the cleat is mounted may be reinforced to withstand greater forces such as towing or docking a boat with the cleat. As these reinforced cleats are generally disposed outside of the main passenger compartments, they may serve as a preferable location for affixing boating accessories.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a cleat-mountable support which may be secured to a cleat. Further, it would be desirable to provide an equipment rack operably connected to a cleat-mountable support.